So, is it possible to run Horror in RPGs? I am talking far more than a system of SAN points or the like but more of creating that pulse beating terror that you get at a great horror movie or reading a good horror book. I think the only way to do Horror would be to have an extraordinary GM that uses excellent props and story telling. It could just be me but I would not have the same sort of reaction in an RPG that I do to a zombie popping out on screen.

That said, the last horror game I was truly scared in was a game of Chill run by an excellent GM where he used plans of the middle school we were playing in...on Halloween. A cool adventure that was.

So, first question, can Horror be run, by system reinforcement, in an RPG or does the system just get in the way and diffuse the suspense?

Second, can it only be run by the skill of the GM?

Bill

Well, cheap tricks never hurt.

I once reached-out and grabbed a player by the ankle while his Call of Cthulhu character was tip-toeing across a floor covered with dismembered, but still somehow living, body parts.

Sucker jumped-up, howled and just about shit his pants.

I would say GMing skill has more to do with it.




Mechanically speaking, the threat of death must be ever present. Of course, I'm of the opinion that this is always the case... it's just more so for horror. (In DnD)Zombies, for example, aren't scary against of tenth level characters. Drowning, on the other hand, is one of those things that characters don't survive any better as they gain levels. Drowning in a pool of horrible bloody baby things that giggle and grapple and pull you under... that's a mechanical effect and a bit of good horror description.

Illustration has always worked better for me than description. I can think of some pretty horrible things to describe but I'm not exactly eloquent... so I guess that may just be personal preferrence.

Yes, I'd say this definitely depends more on being able to create ambiance than anything that could be done with system.

RPGPundit

Quote from: beejazzI would say GMing skill has more to do with it.




Mechanically speaking, the threat of death must be ever present. Of course, I'm of the opinion that this is always the case... it's just more so for horror.

Actualy, I'm more in the "there are worst things than death" camp. Realising that you are doomed and death is not an escape, is one of my favourite horror themes.

IME horror works best in the hands of a GM who can sustain an atmosphere of dread consistenly and also players who are invested in the game and their characters. System really does not come into play, IMHO.

Regards,
David R

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While I think that the majority of creating horror relies on the storytelling abilities of the GM the system has to be able to back it up.

If you try and scare the crap out of the players with the 'oh so scary enemy' and they can 1-hit kill the enemy then a lot of that sense of horror is lost.  By the same notion good horror relies on players being competent in their own abilities because they need that stabalizing factor.  So a system that has a huge random varriability hurts a horror element, since far to often luck becomes the focus more then the horror.

Slow build up.
That's always worked best for me and the tension is one of the few things you can successfully bring off at the RPG table I think.

I agree that the system can only do so much, the gm plays a big role.  But the system can hurt you.  As others have said, lethality has to be built in.  

I also think that a rules heavy system can get in the way of suspension of disbelief.  More precisely, a system that takes up time for calculations and looking up rules pulls players out of the moment.

The setting/system should also allow players to identify with their characters so the threat feels more immediate - more "I'm about to die" less "My character is about to die"

Quote from: NicephorusThe setting/system should also allow players to identify with their characters so the threat feels more immediate - more "I'm about to die" less "My character is about to die"

That's an excellent point.  When that happens you are really turning to what Role Playing is about be it horror, general fantasy whatever.  When a player identifies with the character and doesn't view it with the same sort of 3rd person qualities you have when playing a video game.  Actually come to think of it I think it's probably easier to get that you're going to die quality more often then your on screen character is going to die.  Because in video games there is often more immediate immersion.

So how do we accomplish that same level of immersion in an RPG?  For me I find familiarity of the GM and the players is the primary factor.  Not familiarity with each other but familiarity to the system.  The more you know the system the less time you have to break out of the game to consult the rules.

Now this does mean that less cumbersome rules have an advantage but doesn't mean it can't be done in a rules heavy game also.  It just takes more years of experience to get there.  One strike against rule heavy games though I've found is that they open up more debate and rules lawyering which will snap you back to reality faster then anything.

For me my favorite system is WFRP - a medium weight system accordingly.  Now why I like this game is that all the crunch is taken care of ahead of time.  Once the game begins the characters sheets are laid out with relevant numbers easily and the mechanics are simplistic.  No massive tables of look-up charts to consult for difficulty mods or a tome of feats, skills and spells to flip through either.  Just a simple -30 - +30 modifier on a given action super simple.

Oddly I've seldom had this level of immersion in rules light games.  It's a personal thing but I require some undefinable level of crunch to actually feel like I'm playing a game and not just telling a story.  It's a fine line but it's there.

I've had a lot of success with horror in RPGS, but it is entirely a function of your capacity to develop atmosphere and tension.

I usually take a "by any means necessary" approach to this.

Candles are absolutely necessary, particularly if you can set a bunch of them dead center in the table. People feel drawn to look at the flickering light, which affects the brainwaves and can induce a hypnagogic state sometimes.

I'm also a big fan of using auditory cues and ambient noise. I found some audio samples of a "dying rabbit" call hunters use to lure in coyotes. I taped it on a handheld tape recorder and would play it at a level of just below annoying whenever the players were in particularly horrible situations.

I also had a sound machine with a heartbeat function - I used to leave that one on all the time whenever they were in a haunted house or something.

Speaking of atmosphere, your voice is a great tool. Whispering, shouting...fast or slow rate of speech. It can be used to great effect.

Finally, I love playing the part of objective narrator ("The door opens, moved by an unseen force. You hear a sound like footsteps creaking on the old wooden floors") and switching into subjective stream of consciousness mode at the same time ("Your character thinks it's likely that a draft of wind pushed the door open. It's your nerves. That's probably it. Don't worry about it.")
Doing this well, especially when you strongly argue for and against the supernatural origin of any particular phenomenon, can really induce a sense of confusion and dread in your players. This last step is best used in campaigns where there is not necessarily objective proof of the supernatural.

This might be too much info, if so, I'm sorry! This has just been what worked for me. I have a psychology degree, so maybe this just makes me a bit more inclined to pull silly mind games on my players, but my campaign really worked well with them.

Count me in with the ambiance/GM importance. I just got through running a modern-day horror game via Skype and used sound effects and images to, I would say, substantial effect. If the players had been playing in a blacked-out room, it might've been even more effective.

It's my opinion that 'System' matters most when it reinforces behavior on the part of the GM or Players that would not be happening anyway--but is desirable. So, for example, if you have a system (like Dogs) where it is very hard for the GM to railroad the players, this matters a lot when you have a GM who might, in his heart, meaning well, railroad the players. Then it matters. If you have a GM who doesn't railroad the players, some substantial piece of the GM-restrictions in Dogs aren't going to matter to that group as much (note that they may matter in other ways such as delivering just the very specific kind of experience Dogs does--but the actual "improvement in play" will not be as visible, IME, in groups that aren't having the problems the system solves).

So how could horror be helped?

Lethality is one good one. The more mortal you feel, probably the better. Hero was a problem for us on that front--GURPS was superior (in some ways, anyway).

I think a system might help pacing. If a horror system sort of required build-up, prevented things from developing or degenerating too fast, etc. That might be good for some groups/games.

A system that helped prevent turtle-play might encourage players prone to turtling up (but, again, if you have players that do that, you might be better off with new players rather than another system).

And so on.

But I think that part of what I'm looking for in "a good GM" is that the person is a good story-teller in general--and I think that's way more important when it comes to horror than to some other genres. It's probably easier to set the stage and develop a dungeon crawl or a star-trader out on the rim than to generate a feeling of fear that grows and is personalized simply by running a formula.

-Marco

Impossible Dream has a game called Dread that uses a Jenga board as its resolution mechanic.  Slow buildup leading to a tense end is built into it...it's designed for one shots.

The website for it is here.  I haven't played it, so i can't comment further, but it sounds pretty damn good at horror.

Ambiance is key, most definitely.  I recently ran a Horror episode of my Buffy game, with the PCs trapped inside a mental ward with two warring ghosts.  It went really well.

- Cut them off.  In this session, after they entered the abandoned hospital the doors slammed shut and refused to open.  Cell phones cut out, and the land lines were long since dead.  No calling for help.
- Threaten them.  They had a wide variety of superpowers, but no real way to fight disembodied spirits.  I didn't use this to hose them, they were rather clever in finding ways to avoid the objects the angry spirits were throwing around.  But nothing they could do to fight back.
- Use cues from movies.  Old hospitals are creepy, and one of the ghosts was a little girl.  The creepy little kid is a horror staple these days, so they reacted well to her.
- Voice and inflection.  A sudden shout can startle.  A whisper can get them to lean closer and pay careful attention.  A snarl can threaten.  Use all of these.
- The Unknown.  Put them in this creepy, threatening place with some stuff going on that they don't understand.
- Conclude it all (THIS IS IMPORTANT)  After you've creeped everyone out, don't fight against them in resolving the situation.  After being in the hospital for awhile they figured out what was going on.  They find out how to exorcise the spirit, have some manifestations for the combat monkeys to fend off, and they lay the spirits to rest.  If you don't do this the players are going to get frustrated and irritible.
- Have player buy-in.  This is essential.  Some people like playing people caught in a horror movie, others do not.  No amount of candles, voice inflections, or sinister descriptions is going to jack if your players aren't interested in playing someone like that.  If they're gunning to be a superhero or brave champion or whatever it just isn't going to work.

Hi Bill!

The truth is, Horror can be run very well in an RPG, but there is no way to guarantee this mechanically. It's all about how you GM it.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceHi Bill!

The truth is, Horror can be run very well in an RPG, but there is no way to guarantee this mechanically. It's all about how you GM it.

-clash

Clash,
This is what I was trying to get at. We have both heard how much people go on about system this and system that but I was wondering if this was not one of the basic metrics we could look at to say "System is a tool, the GM makes the story". I know, as a publisher, I am supposed to say "OMG! The Iridium System is the shizzat!!!!! You can run any setting and it works every where! It'll cure cancer!!!" but I have always been one of those designers who think that there are a base number of things a system must do to function and if it does those you can emmulate any setting.

Now, do not get me wrong, you can throuw some dressing on the system to help out with a particular setting. For instance, some folks like SAN systems for horror but to me, that is...just a tool with in the setting. It plays to a preference of certain gamers to do SAN points. Me, I do not care for SAN points because I prefer to play it out. Does not mean I hate them, just do not prefer them.

One of the reasons I made a fantasy, pulp, sci-fi and alt-earth RPGs in separate books was to help reinforce the setting with setting specific system rules. At no point do I look at it as reworking the entire system. In fact, I use the same mechanics but with different setting reference.

Sorry, got a little off track.  To sum up, the basic system requirements for horror is lethality. The GM/Ambience requirements are many (much better outlined by others in this thread).

Here is a continiation of this thought. Does the same apply to other genres? Fantasy seems to be the antithesis of this. You can run it in the most sterile environment (I once ran in a childrens ward in a hospital) and still have people engaged. Is this common or the exception?

Bill